This thread encouraged me to dabble with my own response to Cold Turkey, here's a breakdown of my day:
Sunday-11:30pm last cigarette on the way home from a friend's.
Monday 7:30AM Woke up pretty much as normal.
8-8:30AM- This is usually my first cigarette of the day on my way into work. Only today I noticed that the usual fogginess feeling wasn't clearing and I was sleepy.
11:00 AM usually my first smoke break, bought a ton of candy instead, blood sugar spiked and felt like a bad diabetic.
1:30 PM second smoke break. mild headache but nothing terrible, busy enough where I wasn't thinking about it really.
3PM-4:30PM Intense fogginess, my ears developed an increasing "buzz" and it became difficult to hear what people were saying. I felt extremely distracted.
4:30-5PM First serious craving begins. My driving was drastically affected and while I'm normally a pretty safe driver, I wasn't checking lanes, swore a storm at other drivers who weren't really doing anything wrong, just not moving fast enough, it was a bad experience.
At this point my car wreaked of stale cigarettes and was very gross, apparently smell starts to come back faster than I thought, despite this my craving was intensified. There's a recent string of quit ads that show people screwing up day to day stuff, it's very real, was dropping things, walking into things, it's a feeling like you're doing a thousand things at the same time when really you're not even doing one.
5-6PM Got home and was getting ready for a nice valentines day date night. Wife had a hard day and wanted to talk but it was hard to hear, and I was getting unreasonably short, definite exercise in patience. Headache was pretty strong and was coughing a lot. I did my best to hide being a complete ass.
Broke down and bought smokes on my way to dinner to avoid being more pissy.
I had read that the average craving lasts for 10 minutes and then subsides. I found this to be an annoyingly outright lie for me. I thought about smoking for an hour and a half straight with an intensity on par with a hormone filled teenager in a yoga class.
The last time I had stopped for 3 days I had worked myself down to about 3 a day, this experience is from around a pack a day average. I think before I try again I'm going to cut down to less, and maybe have a week with a filtered cigarette (I smoke straights)
I'm not sure if everyone experiences the same thing and I'm just a wimp or if something else is going on, but it's an incredibly daunting task to me and I have extreme respect for those who quit.
I do get offended by those who treat smokers as social pariah's though, to me it's like picking on a handicapped kid, addiction is addiction, it's become more than just a choice not to smoke, it has effects in a lot of different areas of my life.
Sunday-11:30pm last cigarette on the way home from a friend's.
Monday 7:30AM Woke up pretty much as normal.
8-8:30AM- This is usually my first cigarette of the day on my way into work. Only today I noticed that the usual fogginess feeling wasn't clearing and I was sleepy.
11:00 AM usually my first smoke break, bought a ton of candy instead, blood sugar spiked and felt like a bad diabetic.
1:30 PM second smoke break. mild headache but nothing terrible, busy enough where I wasn't thinking about it really.
3PM-4:30PM Intense fogginess, my ears developed an increasing "buzz" and it became difficult to hear what people were saying. I felt extremely distracted.
4:30-5PM First serious craving begins. My driving was drastically affected and while I'm normally a pretty safe driver, I wasn't checking lanes, swore a storm at other drivers who weren't really doing anything wrong, just not moving fast enough, it was a bad experience.
At this point my car wreaked of stale cigarettes and was very gross, apparently smell starts to come back faster than I thought, despite this my craving was intensified. There's a recent string of quit ads that show people screwing up day to day stuff, it's very real, was dropping things, walking into things, it's a feeling like you're doing a thousand things at the same time when really you're not even doing one.
5-6PM Got home and was getting ready for a nice valentines day date night. Wife had a hard day and wanted to talk but it was hard to hear, and I was getting unreasonably short, definite exercise in patience. Headache was pretty strong and was coughing a lot. I did my best to hide being a complete ass.
Broke down and bought smokes on my way to dinner to avoid being more pissy.
I had read that the average craving lasts for 10 minutes and then subsides. I found this to be an annoyingly outright lie for me. I thought about smoking for an hour and a half straight with an intensity on par with a hormone filled teenager in a yoga class.
The last time I had stopped for 3 days I had worked myself down to about 3 a day, this experience is from around a pack a day average. I think before I try again I'm going to cut down to less, and maybe have a week with a filtered cigarette (I smoke straights)
I'm not sure if everyone experiences the same thing and I'm just a wimp or if something else is going on, but it's an incredibly daunting task to me and I have extreme respect for those who quit.
I do get offended by those who treat smokers as social pariah's though, to me it's like picking on a handicapped kid, addiction is addiction, it's become more than just a choice not to smoke, it has effects in a lot of different areas of my life.